


Responsibility

by Anonymous



Category: A Redtail's Dream (Webcomic)
Genre: Baking, F/F, Fluff, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-29
Updated: 2016-01-29
Packaged: 2018-05-16 23:16:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,459
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5844778
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jonna has to come to terms with her father retiring as owner of the family store. Riikka? She's just trying to clean.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Responsibility

**Author's Note:**

  * For [yuuago](https://archiveofourown.org/users/yuuago/gifts).



Jonna sat at one of the tables in the Kuikka general store, staring blankly out a window as Riikka maneuvered around with a broom, doing the cleaning-up. Heavy rain struck the dining-side windows at a slant. Grim weather. Cold weather, too, judging by the frost fogging in around the corners of the panes. Well, at least that gave Jonna something to look at as she thought.

Behind her, Riikka hummed pleasantly as she worked. It was a nice tune, something calm, and gave Jonna a good sense of where Riikka was as she bustled around. When the humming and the bustling came close, she silently and obediently lifted her feet off the floor to let Riikka reach that particular section of dust, dirt, and/or crud.

“Thanks,” she said in gratitude, then turned. Riikka had gathered everything up into a dustpan; she upended it just as Jonna started watching her, then repeated the whole process all over again a few feet away.

“No problem, I’m happy to take over.”

Jonna would be helping, of course, normally. 

She would! Even though Riikka was… a lot faster than she was at this one thing. Or, well, she was more focused and less prone to distractions, which added up to being faster, when it actually came down to it. That wasn’t the point: the point was that Jonna didn’t usually stare out of windows instead of helping to close up shop! Lately, whenever the store was particularly slow (and Riikka was bored) or particularly busy (and so they needed extra helping hands), Riikka would involve herself in handling the place. Just a little bit of this and a little bit of that: no one would have ever actually asked her to, excepting Hannu trying to get out of things. She didn’t _need_ to be asked, though: she _really was_ just happy to help, it warmed Jonna’s heart. Made her swoon, a little, too.

But that was--also not the point, as grateful as she was for it. The thing was--the thing was, the store had always been in the family, at least so far as she was concerned. She and Joona had grown up as employees, a sibling labor force, their father gradually allowing them more and larger responsibilities as his trust in them also grew. And on the flip side they’d gotten in more and more trouble with him for slacking off, the older they got and the more he figured they ought to know better.

So, their father, _that_ was the point. That was what she and her brother were used to. Their father as the head of the store and the conductor of everything that went on in or around it, like a small god of goods both general and baked. It was plain impossible to think of the Kuikka general store without Jouko Kuikka eternally at the helm.

And yet. And yet, she would have to; they all would, since he’d announced he was retiring. Retiring! It made sense, he was _so_ old (though no doubt he'd just go and get himself involved in something _else_ anyway), but… still. She had kind of envisioned him working right up until the day he died. Joona and Hannu thought so, too; she’d asked. Probably everyone thought so.

“Joona and I can’t run the store,” she sighed, matter-of-fact. “It’ll burn to the ground within a week.”

“Oh! Don’t say things like that,” Riikka responded, all fuss and concern as she leaned the broom against the windowsill and plopped herself down into the chair opposite Jonna’s. She tore off an ample piece of a cardamom bun that had been waiting for her on the table so she could snack while she thought over her next words.

The bun: baked in the same batch as the rest of the day’s cardamom buns, but with its recipe shifted around here and there--a little less sugar, a little more cinnamon--to appeal more to her girlfriend’s tastes, then carefully nestled under its brethren in the warm pastry case, just so nobody else would get any smart ideas about trying to buy it. And, from the look on Riikka’s face, she was definitely enjoying the final product; pride in that fact, and in doing something nice for someone so darned cute, distracted Jonna from worrying for the little while it took Riikka to speak up again.

“Even if,” she finally continued, “even if you’re worried about how _you’ll_ handle things, which I _don’t_ think you should be, Jonna, you’re plenty capable when it’s something you care about--”

“Aw, you sweetheart, I bet I’m blushing!”

“I’m-- trying to comfort you!” Now Riikka was blushing adorably, herself. Heh. “But I guess you didn’t need it. No, what I meant is--I’m sure you’ll be able to handle it, you and Joona. Besides, Hannu will still be around to help, and isn’t Oona now at the age you two were when you got started?”

“Well, yyyes,” Jonna acknowledged, “but I’m not sure Hannu and Oona would’ve been _my_ first argument for why it _won’t_ burn down.”

“W-well,” Riikka said. “Well. So, we’ll schedule them for alternate days, no problem, easy as pie.”

They’d have to come back to this topic sometime, scheduling logistics and all that other exhausting serious business stuff. Jonna was just the tiniest bit distracted. “Sorry. Was that… ‘we’?”

“I… what? Oh-- _um_ , yes, I think so? Yes. Goodness knows I’m here more days than I’m not already, anyway,” she laughed. The gentlest hint of self-consciousness, there, so Jonna didn’t press the issue. (Why would she press it? She _liked_ the half-promise every day at the store held, that background hope that Riikka would show up sooner or later.) “I mean, would that be okay?”

“Huh? Of course! It’s great, that would be _great_. Honestly, it’s probably a better idea than leaning too hard on Oona.” She was the same age Jonna and Joona had been when they’d first started having real impact as employees: taking register shifts and interacting with customers instead of just moving cans of food back and forth, et cetera. If she was anything like they had been at that age, she wouldn’t want to do it at _all_. “Better to leave her for smaller duties and let you handle the public.”

“You’re sure? Jonna, wow! I’ll do my best!”

She nodded. “Of course I’m sure. We’ll have lines out the doors by the second day, I’ll have to shoo suitors away with the broom there.”

Riikka laughed but didn’t bother to argue with that bit of teasing. Jonna was glad; she could lay it on a little thick sometimes, but it was nice, actually, to have the opportunity to be so fond of someone. “Really,” she added, more genuine now. “It’ll be nice to have you around.”

“It’ll be nice to be around! Although you’d better not specially make me a treat _every_ day, or in a few weeks I won’t be able to make it through the front door.”

She knew?! “You kn--”

Riikka interrupted her by smiling, nudging the plate and the very last bite towards Jonna, and standing to retrieve her dustpan and finish the last of the cleaning-up. “I _have_ been coming here for quite a while, if you’ll remember, you great big goose. Stay put and enjoy that, alright?”

“A-alright. Yes, alright.” Tiny thing that it was, Jonna scarfed it down promptly: it was good, sweet, an interesting twist on the recipe she’d taste-tested a thousand-thousand times before. Watching Riikka hard at work and cheerful about it, Jonna got that same warm sense of pride as before, felt the uncertainty and doubt easing off her shoulders once again. “Hey,” she called out, “when you’re done. Can I walk you home?”

“You made me clean the floor alone!” Riikka called back, teasing. “I’d better be getting at least some hand-holding out of this, you know.”

“Don’t undersell yourself, you’re definitely in for a good-night kiss too.”

That earned her a strange, measured look. As soon as Jonna got a little nervous about it, Riikka burst out into giggles and held the dustpan out with the handle pointing away from her. “I _was_ letting you sulk, but you’re in _too_ good of a mood! Either start worrying about your future again or help with closing.”

“You’re giving me a choice?”

“Not… really, no.” She held the dustpan out a little further; Jonna took it, smiling tentatively back at her. “The sooner we finish here, the more time we have together after, right?”

“In that case, it’s fine, I’ll just ask Joona to come by a little earlier in the morning and finish up, no problem at all-- kidding! I’m kidding! Stop looking at me like that!”


End file.
